Arab Christians riot in Israel over musem’s display of a crucified Ronald McDonald

Lest you forget that it’s not just Muslim believers who get enraged by images of gods and prophets, have a look at this article from the Times of Israel (click on screenshot) about a big tempest in a small teapot at the Haifa Museum of Art. Haaretz also reports on the physical battle.

(From the Times of Israel) The ‘McJesus’ sculpture by Finnish artist Jani Leinonen on display at the Haifa Museum. (Haifa Museum)’

Enlarged, from Haaretz:

Credit: Vilhelm Sjöström

Apparently hundreds of Arab Christian demonstrators, incensed that this artwork—“McJesus,” by Finnish artist Janei Leinonen—tried to force their way into the Museum, leading to a clash with the police. Three cops were injured by rocks thrown by protestors, and the police retaliated with tear gas and stun grenades. A protestor also threw a Molotov cocktail at the Museum on Thursday.

The crucified Ronald McDonald has been on display for over five months as part of the Museum’s “Sacred Goods” exhibit, whose purpose is to “focus on the responses of contemporary artists to issues of religion and faith in the contemporary global reality, which is dominated by the consumer culture.” This statue seems to be right in line with that purpose, and reminds me of a similar protested artwork: American artist Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ“. That was a photograph of a crucifix immersed in a beaker of the artist’s own urine:

Like “McJesus,” Serrano said his work wasn’t intended to make fun of Christianity, but to call attention to the commercialization of icons in modern religious culture. Nevertheless, it too was protested when exhibited in 1989, and even the budget of the American National Endowment for the Arts was cut. When “Piss Christ” was shown at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, it was attacked with a hammer and the Gallery had to cancel the show. And it was “vandalized beyond repair” when exhibited in Avignon, France, though it was reconstructed from the original photograph.

One would think that believers would best leave this alone, as it only calls attention to a work they despise. But when museums cancel these exhibits, the believers win, and even when the work is not anti-religious, canceling it attacks freedom of expression and unduly privileges religion.

Even the avowed secular government of Israel caved to the protestors. As the Times of Israel reports:

“Disrespect of religious symbols sacred to many worshipers in the world as an act of artistic protest is illegitimate and cannot serve as art at a cultural institution supported by state funds,” she wrote.

Of course it’s legitimate! State funds shouldn’t be used to protect religious sentiments whose meaning is dissected in works of art. And of course disrespecting religious symbols is one of the best ways to raise attention to “artistic protest.”

In response, Museum has proposed a reasonable solution to those enraged:

In response to Friday’s protest, the Haifa Museum said Tal agreed during a meeting with church leaders and officials from the Haifa Municipality to put up a sign at the entrance to the exhibit explaining it contains potentially offensive content.

Actually, if I didn’t know how the Piss Christ was created, I’d appreciate this blurred image in hues of yellow, orange and red – it somehow gives me the impression of a painful end. If the artist had kept his mouth shut about how he had made it, I guess some would admire his work. But he wanted to provoke.

Yes.
Which is obviously the point that DW is making : works of profundity like this, which cause the viewer to examine their own assumptions about what they believe matters and to re-assess what lorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, it is that actually does influence them, instead of what they think influences them, is indeed delicate work of great taste.
Onions with mine, please. No need to throw in any bulking agents.

This may be derailing the thread, so please feel free to delete my comment.

Coincidently, I just saw a tweet on my feed concerning this event. As seen through the lens of an apparent antiZionist, her account differs remarkably from the objective take here on WEIT:

BREAKING: #Palestinian Christians violently protest #Israel’s mockery of Jesus as a Ronald McDonald. Yet evangelical Christians in the US support Israel and want genocide against Palestinians. https://t.co/Un1UYKYW2z

A large proportion of Gazans have refugee status and are supported by the UN. There are also other flows of cash into Gaza. Had the Gazans been forced to make a living like all normal people, I suppose that the dominant mood there wouldn’t be so belligerent.

Putting up a sign warning of potentially offensive content is not going to placate the offended. But I don’t see a better way to respond to this. One could wish that the protesters would see the light, but that does not seem remotely likely.

Displays in this museum may not comport with your beliefs/religion/philosophy/worldview/alternative facts. If any display is offensive to you,it is your democratic right to look at something else instead.

I just had a mental image of the gift shop having a line of McCrucifixes (and Col.Crucifixes, Chicken Crucifixes, God, Mohammed’s body-double (give the guy some extra income from the Jeebus double-act), Buddha-fixes etc), suitably-sized urine containers, and instruction manuals. “You too can make your opinions of one, all , or some religions as clear as piss.
You’d need some sort of preservative to stop the urine going off. A pH buffer too, I suspect. All grist to the sales mill.
Ah, dreams!
Spaghetti and meatballs for supper tonight! I feel the need to perform sacraments.

It’s sad that this gathering didn’t take the moral high ground as a peaceful protest, which would have been the right thing to do. I don’t think displays desecrating religious or national symbols are generally appropriate in museums (imagine if it were a Star of David or the flag of Israel or the United States – I would personally object to that myself, if I saw it here in the US) – but violence is never the answer in such cases, a worse wrong doesn’t make a right.

I’ve wondered, these crucified figures always have nails through their hands. Could that carry enough weight? Wouldn’t the weight of the body just rip the hands to pieces? I’m not sure, shouldn’t it be through the wrists, between radius and ulna?
Note, I’m not volunteering for a real experiment to find out.

I think the same. Or maybe the wrists or arms were tied to the cross and the nails are just auxiliary. But I have never seen a crucifixion depicted by an eye-witness, which would answere the question. Early Roman artists were not drawn to this theme, unlike their Christian successors. I suppose that such a widespread display of the image of a torture victim makes people from non-Christian cultures roll their eyes.

I don’t have the precise reference to hand, but I do recall reading somewhere that experiments using human corpses have been performed to test the mechanics of crucifixion, and that the nails do indeed have to go through the wrist. Nailing through the hands isn’t strong enough to support the weight of a human body.

There is a cult/ sect/ mass hysteria, I think in the Philippines, where the Easter “celebrations” includes one or several people getting crucified. They’ll know what is needed.
Various TV crews turn up on a regular basis, and I vaguely recall at least one surgeon with a predilection for god-bothering throwing his ten cents into the cut too.

I’ve been looking it up: it is a nest of nails. There is no unanimity (to put it mildly) and there are dozens of ways of ‘crucifying’. Some with ‘support’ by nailing through the genitalia, which would allow to nail through the hands instead of the wrists.
I think the archaeological evidence you refer to was presented by Mr Haas, but his findings have been disputed by several others. One thing is sure, this is a problem that has been under discussion for centuries, nothing original 😦 Books have been written, and I’m sure one could write another one.
As far as I can see the only areas where crucifixion is still used in the 21st Century as punishment is in some arab countries (United Emirates, Saud -how does that fail to surprise me?).

Was it a ‘seat’ or a (wooden nailing -kegging?) nailing through the genitalia? But yes, that is mentioned indeed.
Often the legs were broken, increasing the suffering while shortening it at the same time. Reminiscent of breaking on the wheel.
When you start looking up these ways of executing you see there is no end to the creativity humans have in torturing their conspecifics to death.

One thing has a near consensus: the crucified were stripped naked, no loincloth, although Jewish women were crucified facing the cross, “modesty” privilege. Apparently this modesty was only granted to Jewish women (by Romans? I somehow find that hard to believe).

So all these statues of Jesus (who didn’t actually exist) hanging on a cross with his dangly bits discreetly wrapped in a loincloth are bogus? I mean, even boguser than usual.

Maybe, as a genetic freak (considering his ancestry and his apparent disinterest in wimmin (except, possibly and apocryphally, Mary Magdalene)) he didn’t actually have dangly bits for the Romans to whack a nine inch nail through.

I have, however, some understanding to the poor Israeli Christians. Sandwiched between Islamists and ultra-orthodox Jews (the dread of flight crews and air travellers), they never get any limelight and must feel neglected. I suppose that museums in Israel, as in other countries, never show images of Mohammed so that not to offend Islamists; the ultra-orthodox Jews recently got evolution exhibits curtained; so Christians end up as the only group with no say about museum exhibits. Time to catch up!

It seems likely Serrano and Leinonen knew there works would likely trigger violent protest from believers. They probably think of the protest as part of the work of art broadly construed. The physical object of art can be destroyed and still, the destruction can be seen as part of the artistic statement.

I am also a non-native English speaker, but I suppose that in this case, “Arab Christians” is to be preferred because they act motivated by their religion. Actually, “Arab” could be omitted altogether, but it specifies that the protesters are citizens, not visiting foreigners.

Yeah, from a purely interpretive point of view, putting any kind of offense aside, I have no idea what the point of such a piece is supposed to be, other than a moment of carnivalesque, Lady Gaga style POMO “weird for the sake of weird” (in the words of Moe from the Simpson) shock value. The artist says he wasn’t trying to be offensive so presumably he’s not *calling Christ a clown; and from the opposite angle, no one is calling McDonald’s some sort of sad ‘crucified’ figure (somewhat off topic, but on reflection, Christians are generally ok with and even encourage using the Christ archetype if one does it to symbolize *actual perceived hardship in one’s life – look at Puff Daddy and Kayne West, for example, both dressed up as Christ on the cross at one point – it struck me as pretty self-aggrandizing, but I don’t remember much or any outrage about that, as they were working through feelings of perceived persecution or whatever and not doing it in a mocking way.)

Even when interpreting the Piss Christ piece, one can come up with plenty of plausible interpretations; as one can anytime you put two ends of a dichotomy side by side. The sacred and the profane, they seem so polarized, and yet is God not in *all things, etc., etc. That’s a term paper and a Vision Quest to the East for some prep school kid practically writing itself. But McDonald’s? If anything McDonald’s is more Pontius Pilate, the one *doing the slow killing these days, if you look at obesity rates.

I would guess that the artist was intending to make a statement or criticism about worshiping consumerism. A common though perhaps cliche subject. As with any thing humans do, 90% of the art produced isn’t really all that noteworthy.

I agree this is not a particularly fine piece of art, but in the context of this particular incident I think the behavior of the people involved and the religious & cultural beliefs inspiring them are exponentially more worthy of criticism than the art or the people who decided to display it in the museum.

THAT would be one “unhappy meal”
Who was it in the sixties that said they were more popular than jesus christ… the golden arch has a lot in common with religion, in a nutshell, its crap food for your nutritional needs, like religion is for your intellectual needs. Mind the children I say.

Yes. It was John Lenin, of course, who said that popularity thing, and he triggered a storm of angst from you know who. Certainly the work does suggest that we compare and contrast Mac D and our lord and savior. It is out of this comparison that the art begins to have it’s most interesting effect. Humans (that means you and me) are subject to urges and tendencies that we should all explore form time to time. Whether it be the urge to engulf nutrient particles like an amoeba, or to be engulfed by a power greater than ourselves.

I think that’s a very charitable interpretation of Shock Jock Art. But even if I roll with that idea, the piece still doesn’t make sense, in that ‘overcoming the ego’ takes a great deal of discipline, training, and work (or at least *perceived discipline, training, and work – dang, now I must lapse into zen-speak); whereas McDonald’s is sort of like a visual manifestation of “Need. More. Impulse. Control. But. Fries. So. Yummy…”.